Sharks! (Feb. 22/09 - Khao Lak, Thailand)

We woke up this morning at the Koh Tachai pinnacle, the site we dove two nights ago. It looked completely different in the daylight, especially since we spent most of the dive in the deeper sections off the outside walls, coming up in the garden-like plateau on top (where we did the night dive) towards the end of the dive. The water was nice and clear, but there was quite a strong current running against us, which made for a bit of a workout! Right away, when we got down to the sand at 90 feet, we spotted a big leopard shark lying on the bottom. It was the first one we had ever seen - about seven feet long, shaped like a stocky nurse shark, and covered with leopard-like spots. A few minutes later, we found an even bigger one that hung around long enough to get a good look at him. From there, we navigated around the huge boulders and found lots of feather stars, grouper, anemonefish, moorish idols, moray eels, seastars, a big school of juvenile fusiliers, and a lone barracuda on the prowl. The top of the pinnacle really felt like swimming in an aquarium with so many fish mingling together, little current on top, and water so clear that you can easily see all sides of the pinnacle, other divers, and our boat waiting above.


It was a 3 hour sail back toward the mainland, but we had one more dive at the Boonsung wreck before ending the trip back at the dock. This was a dredging platform that sunk here in the 1980's, and stood on the bottom intact until the 2004 tsunami roared ashore and ripped it apart. Now it's a jumble of steel and unidentifiable parts scattered on the bottom in 60 feet of water. Unfortunately, the brown organic algae stuff that has accumulated on all the surfaces is easily stirred up by the boatloads of divers that come here daily on dive trips from the mainland. As a result, the visibility was crap - five feet at best! Making our way carefully through the muck made us feel like we were back at Porteau Cove at home! Thankfully, there was a lot to look at - tons of schooling fish, super camoflauged stonefish that we almost landed on by accident (they're poisonous!), lionfish, honeycomb and white-eyed moray eels, a pipefish, and tons of pretty little nudibranchs. They were everywhere - hard to spot because they are so small, but colourful, exotic, and plastered all over the wreck! This too was supposed to be a common spot for seeing whale sharks, but the visibility was so bad that one could've swam right over your head and you never would have known! It was still an enjoyable dive, and a pleasant end to our awesome dive trip.


The waters off the Similan and surrounding islands were more vibrant and impressive than we had expected, and even though we didn't see any of the commonly seen manta rays or whale sharks, we certainly did see an abundance of bizarre fish, nudibranchs, random critters, and beautiful corals. Similan Dive Safaris provided a great boat, great staff, fabulous food, and professional service. It might have been a splurge for our budget, but it was worth every penny, and some of the memories made here will no doubt be some of the highlights of our whole trip!